Places

Jaldapara National ParkWildlifeAlipurduar

Tall riverine grassland on the Torsa, protected as a sanctuary from 1941 and made a national park in 2014, and holding the largest population of the greater one-horned rhinoceros in West Bengal — second in India only to Kaziranga. The grassland is maintained rather than left alone; without periodic burning and grazing it would become forest, and the rhino would go with it.

Best time: October–April. Getting there: Madarihat, on the road and rail line between Siliguri and Alipurduar.

Gorumara National ParkWildlifeJalpaiguri

A small park between the Murti and Raidak, made a national park in 1994, with rhino, gaur, elephant and a set of watchtowers built over salt licks that are the standard way of seeing them. It sits inside a mosaic of tea gardens and forest villages, which is why its animals are constantly in transit across human land.

Best time: October–April.

Buxa Tiger Reserve and Buxa FortWildlifeAlipurduar

A reserve declared in 1983 running from riverine plain to hill forest against the Bhutan slope, containing the ruins of Buxa Fort — a hill post on the old Bhutan trade route that was later used as a detention camp during the freedom movement. The walk up from Santalabari to the fort is the usual approach.

Chapramari Wildlife SanctuaryWildlifeKalimpong and Jalpaiguri

A narrow block of forest on the Murti, contiguous with Gorumara, and one of the main crossing points for elephants moving between the foothill reserves. The railway line and a road both pass through it.

Mahananda Wildlife Sanctuary and SuknaWildlifeDarjeeling

Sal forest between the Teesta and the Mahananda where the hills meet the plain, and the western anchor of the elephant range. Sukna at its edge is where the toy train begins to climb.

TotoparaHeritageAlipurduar

A single settlement at the foot of the Bhutan hills, home to the Toto — one of the smallest distinct communities in India, with their own Sino-Tibetan language and, since recent decades, their own script. The village sits between the Torsa and the Hauri and has historically traded up into Bhutan as much as down into the plain.

Chilapata forest and Nalrajar GarhHeritageAlipurduar

A corridor forest between Jaldapara and Buxa, holding the brick remains of a fortification traditionally attributed to the Nal rulers and dated by local tradition to the Gupta period. It is one of very few standing pre-colonial structures in a landscape whose rivers remove everything.

JayantiNatureAlipurduar

A village on a wide white riverbed under the Buxa hills, dry enough to walk across in winter and impassable in the monsoon. The Mahakal caves in the limestone above it draw pilgrims at Shivratri.

Best time: November–March.

Coronation Bridge at SevokeHeritageDarjeeling and Kalimpong

A single-span arch thrown across the Teesta gorge and completed in 1941, carrying the road at the exact point where the river leaves the hills. It is the hinge between the mountains and the plain, and every route to Sikkim and the Dooars passes over or under it.

Jalpesh TemplePilgrimageJalpaiguri

A Shiva temple at Mainaguri whose Sravan mela draws pilgrims walking from across North Bengal with water carried from the Teesta. The present structure is a nineteenth-century rebuilding of a much older foundation.

Best time: Sravan (July–August).

Bindu, Jhalong and SamsingNatureKalimpong and Jalpaiguri

Where the Jaldhaka comes out of the hills on the Bhutan edge — cardamom and orange slopes above, tea below, and a set of small settlements that sit at the exact transition between the ridge economy and the plantation economy.

JaigaonUrbanAlipurduar

The market town at the main land crossing into Bhutan, facing Phuentsholing across a gate in a single street. Its bazaar is the clearest place to see the foothill trade that gave the Dooars its name still functioning.

Jalpaiguri town and the Teesta embankmentUrbanJalpaiguri

The old administrative and planters' town on the Teesta, with a colonial-era street grid, an embankment built after repeated floods, and the district's Rajbanshi cultural institutions.

Baikunthapur ForestNatureJalpaiguri

A sal forest between Siliguri and Jalpaiguri, associated in local tradition with the Ramayana and with the Baikunthapur raj family, and now an island of old forest inside a rapidly urbanising corridor.